The Hillsboro Community Youth Choir presented their winter concert “Northern Lights – Songs from the Lands of the Aurora” on December 15, 2013. It included songs in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, and French, including this one by the Encore Choir Boys: “Dans Les Chantiers” (The Winter Camp), a French Canadian lumberjack song. It tells the story of a young man’s miserable winter in the “chantiers” (shanties). When he doesn’t get paid, he vows never again to return to the camps. A bad online translation (I’ll try to find a better one):

Here winter arrivesThe rivers are frozen

It’s time to go to the woods

Eat lard and bits of peas

In the yards we will be wintering

Poor traveler! you have to misery

Often you sleep on the floor

In the rain, bad weather

At the rigor of all time

When you arrive in Quebec

Often you make a big beak

You’ll see your bourgeois

That is sitting there at his desk

I would like to be paidFor the time that I have given

the bourgeois is in bankruptcy

And sent back to you eat crusts

When you return to your father

Also to review your mother

The snowman is at the door

And the good wife makes the diner

“Ah! Hello! So, my dear child

We have you brought ben the money?”

What the hell the yards

Never of my life to return.

Here’s a recording of the entire concert (except for two songs flagged for copyright reasons by YouTube):